PASSION AND CAREER

Every time I open the newspaper the advertisements bother a lot. It appears that newspapers were made for advertisements and not news. And advertisements about what? All about institutes offering training for one competitive exam or the other. Who reads these, I often think! But pondering more, it is apparent that this has become the need of the hour. Discussing careers, contemplating over different possibilities is a real important subject nowadays. No matter which step we have reached on our career ladder, we are constantly on the lookout for the NEXT STEP. Whether we are in a job, or in higher secondary or in college , deciding our journey towards something perfect is what occupies us most of the time. Time to time a longing for some career inspiration bloats us. Not all of us are buoyant about our goals and lives, instead we keep fluctuating between the shortlisted options that we have fixed for ourselves.
So whether your decision is about continuing in the same workplace or switching a job or about deciding the field you wanna make a career in, it all requires a re-framing of goals and desires! It is best to seek advice from those who have already been in a similar patch. But even we do so, we are always advised to follow our heart and passion. Surely people who have mapped out a passion for themselves find it easy to locate their journeys, but majority of us lack behind because the passion in us hasn’t been revealed to us yet.
Most of us want to know the way to discover it. But for me I will say that passion isn’t a hidden talent nor is it something that we are born with, it is the energy that inspires us while we try a number of things. Say I try swimming and only after trying can I conclude that whether it is made for me or not! Nothing comes natural and easy to anyone. We have to dig around for options, possibilities and scenarios to discover the best version of myself.
“Ring the bells that still can ring
                                          Forget your perfect offering
                                          There is a crack in everything
                                          That’s how the light gets in”
These lines from Leonard Cohen’s poem are so perfect. Unknown expeditions, undiscovered boundaries and a not so promising scenario leaves us sometimes with the darkest imprint and a wonderful experience. The unexpected leads the way to a breathtaking discovery.
We have a limited vision of the opportunities in front of us. But the universe has a full 3-d view. To be able to live that, we need to dive in and stop predicting too much because as my dad says ” There is no logic to life “. What we face, what we experience and with what we finally end up isn’t according to our plan because choices change at every step. At every step as we move forward we discover different avenues about which we weren’t even aware of earlier.

“Passion kept one fully in the present, so that time became a series of mutually exclusive ‘nows.’” – Sue Halpern, Author
That is one quote that I always wish to weave in my life. If by doing something I feel ecstatic and so out of the world, only then can I say that it was made for me. Work or studies , need to be fascinating and not dull and burdensome. But this kind of a thought often leads us to give up on a number of things so easily even before we discover the passionate realms of it. Usually when we start something new we may find it boring or dull. But first impressions are often misleading. According to me we need to really give the best we can to a certain option before we quit it and move to another.
The “now” we are living in needs to be perfect!
The “now” reminds me of our obsession for the “next”. We live in a time when we aren’t satisfied with what we have instead we always want to change, grow and keep moving. Stopping is synonymous to stagnancy in our vocabulary. At all stages we aspire for the next and aspire would be a wrong word, I would rather say rush! We are always in the rush for the next that most often the now gets compromised. I am not saying that dreaming high is not good but somewhere we forget that our life has become full of landmarks, benchmarks and deadlines. Just before we achieve one of our many deadlines we start thinking and planning the next. The journey wipes off …. we become an embodiment of destinations. And even after reaching the much awaited goal, we are already busy shooting for the next big star. I can’t really demarcate this as right or wrong but somewhere when I analyse all this, it feels ironic and funny. Maybe it is the outcome of the fast world we live in.
Digging further there is another thing that I find funny. Till the time a person is pursuing his studies his goals and dreams are about the field he wants to go in and the type of work he will love. But often when you see adults, the inspiration for them comes not from the type of work but the amount of money they will get from it. Money gravitates their energy and sometimes it leads to compromising of the persons interest for the money. The reason behind this changed behavior of the same individual is maybe because now he has a life to envisage in front of him and the marking of the period when he has to start settling in life. This way he sometimes ends up on a different road altogether which neither enchants him nor inspires the positive in him. He does it for the sake of doing it. But again this cannot be labelled as wrong because passion without reason appears to be hollow. The need to be independent, stable and self serving leads you into working for something that wasn’t ever on your list. But this is what life is all about. It has its flaws and unexpected action. The least we can do is ACCEPT it and create a passion out of it. I believe in the fact that once you know something really well and develop a command over it, you start loving it and feel perfect doing that. We later label it as our passion. For example when a child tells his mother that he hates maths it is actually because he cannot understand the concepts of it and thus it seems as a pressure. If the same child is helped in clarifying the doubts and he spends day-night practicing it, he will master it and the same child would later say that I have a passion for maths because now he easily understands the problems of maths .
The same approach can be applied here too. Whatever path you have decided on put your full energy into it and make it your passion. Love what you do.
“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.”
– George Bernard Shaw
I would conclude on the thought that though passion scales up high, it is balance and satisfaction that keeps us afloat. We need to chalk out a balance.

Years back wishing on this day,
molding riches out of the clay.
Long imagining a world so great,
sparkling shimmer , a magical fate!
But then whispers hazed the view,
Yes, indeed I was new!
Watch your feet as the puddles dance,
A subtle walk veiling the prance!
Standing again on a forked path,
Bags I pondered or a paining scath!
Will upon the heart and a breeze so soft blows,
Thorny though it is the gracious rose!
Smiling again the prickles healed,
And forever I grew in the most befitting field 🙂